Book Review: "The Uncannily Strange and Brief Life of Amadeo Modigliani" by Velibor Čolić

"The world is full of scoundrels"

"The Uncannily Strange and Brief Life of Amadeo Modigliani" by Velibor Čolić

I have no idea why I picked this up in the library, maybe because it just looked interesting, I don't know. At the moment, I have to say my mental health isn't really there and, at the time of writing this in July 2026, I need something like a book on random vignettes to make me feel better a bit. I've been spending the morning reading this short piece of semi-fiction. I call it semi-fiction because I don't know enough about the protagonist to know how much of it is true. Was Amadeo Modigliani a good artist? No, not really. But that doesn't mean his story isn't interesting. He may have died destitute, swapping his paintings for food - but he had an interesting 30 or so years under his belt. However, I don't think it's a good idea to glamorise this kind of ignorance to the self, it can only end badly. Though he was through and through a true bohemian. No money, no life, nothing at all to suggest he was doing alright.

This book has short chapters, told in almost a strange stream-of-consciousness style about the life of Amadeo Modigliani. For example, his relationship with a woman named Jeanne is seen in short cut scenes throughout the book which is also interspersed with his arrest and imprisonment (probably my favourite part of the whole book). Apart from this, we also have quotations from books like Albert Camus' The Stranger in order to add to the experience of this artist existing almost on the outside of society. Another thing this book shows us (which is why I called it semi-fiction rather than nonfiction) is the inner-thoughts of our protagonist. I'm not sure whether the author could possibly know what was going on inside the mind of Amadeo Modigliani but I can be almost sure that some of these are entirely made up because they are so specific in their imagery. Be that as it may, it doesn't mean that the book is doing anything wrong or boring. Many of these internal thoughts are very entertaining and give great reason for why things happen the way they do. The only mistake we would make is assuming that they are 100% true.

"Both God and the Devil play the same key."

"The Uncannily Strange and Brief Life of Amadeo Modigliani" by Velibor Čolić

The final chapter in which the death of the painter is covered, we don't get an average piece of coverage. It's not as straight forward as we would have thought in fact, he doesn't actually just die in the chapter at all. It is just suggested that he does. Another piece of suggestion we have is the imagery surrounding revenge and violence which gives us some notions about his character as being that of a very disturbed young man. He dreams of murdering a woman and filling her body up with pearls. Anyways, the death is written in a similar way. We have a mixture of internal thoughts, something extremely normal happening and our protagonist who seeks only to drink more alcohol presumably (and according to the life of the artist in reality) until he does actually die. This almost makes his death seem like mercy, as if he would be happy to go. He's poor, he's failed at the one thing he wanted to do and now he's also just doing nothing of interest. I have to say, one has to be in a desperate position to not care whether they live or die. I do wonder whether he actually knew he was dying though. The narrative doesn't really give anything away.

All in all, I enjoyed this little book. It's very short in the sense that when I was waiting for my appointment at the doctor's office, I must have read maybe twenty or so pages at least. If you're struggling with nonfiction then I'd recommend this to you and it only goes to show that if you think a book might be interesting then you should definitely pick it up. I had never heard of the author, only a little bit about the subject and nothing about the book itself - but I guess that I got really lucky with this one.

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